


Pillows

by imogenbynight



Series: Odds and Ends [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Fluff, M/M, One Shot, One word prompt: PILLOWS, Post S8, Prompt Fic, SPN Fic Battle, Sam's POV, human!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 22:14:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/997547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imogenbynight/pseuds/imogenbynight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he sees feathers in the hallway, Sam forgets about them by morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pillows

**Author's Note:**

> Written for round one of the [SPN Fic Battle](http://spnwritingbattle.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr. The single word prompt was Pillows.

Since being woken by an alarm, inexplicably blaring at half past five on what was meant to be a lazy Saturday morning, Sam has been laying in bed, willing himself to go back to sleep. It’s no use. He can’t seem to get comfortable, and there’s a bad taste in his mouth, left over from Castiel’s first attempt at cooking dinner the night before.

He isn’t entirely sure how the former angel had managed to make a combination of cheese, garlic and beef taste so spectacularly awful—much less how the flavor has remained after he brushed his teeth for twice as long as normal—but somehow, he managed.

When they’d all given up pretending that it didn’t taste like roadkill, Dean had just clapped Castiel on the back and told him he’d figure it out eventually, while Sam had nodded along, silently hoping he would never enter the kitchen again.

Now, nine hours later, the taste still lingers under his tongue. It can’t be ignored, and with a sigh Sam climbs out of bed, heading toward the nearby bathroom to rinse his mouth again. It’s when he steps out of his room that he sees the feathers in the hallway.

They’re small, speckled gray and white, and there’s absolutely no logical reason for them to be there.

Sam stops and stares at them for a full thirty seconds, blinking, before deciding that he’s too tired to care. If a bird got in somehow, they’ll deal with it in the morning.

In the bathroom, he fills the mug that holds his toothbrush, draining it twice before he wipes roughly at his mouth. The taste is still there, but dulled, and goes back to his room to slide back under the covers and into something resembling peaceful sleep.

By the time he gets up again, a little after nine, the feathers are gone.

He forgets they were ever there. He forgets all about the alarm, too, until it sounds again the next morning.

It’s just as early, just as loud, and he’s startled awake, sitting bolt-upright and blinking in the dark. This time, though, he stays in his bed, pressing his pillow over his face to block out the noise until it stops a few seconds later. Before he falls asleep, he resolves to ask Dean and Castiel which one of them needs to get up so damn early, and _why_ , but by the time morning comes it slips his mind. It happens again and again, and eight days later he finally remembers to mention it, sitting at the kitchen counter beside Castiel while Dean makes them both scrambled eggs.

“What’s with the alarm?”

“Hmm?” Dean says, stirring the pan with one hand while he reaches out for his coffee mug, and Sam yawns before he answers.

“It’s been going off at like half past five every morning this week.”

In his periphery, Sam sees Castiel stiffen, his whole body oddly tense, and Sam looks at him before Dean starts speaking, drawing his attention away. He’s holding the spatula high, lumps of egg clinging to the end. He waves it in the air as he talks, though he doesn’t turn around.

“Oh. Uh… yeah. I set that.”

“What for?” Sam frowns, and Dean stops waving the spatula.

“For…” Dean starts, pausing to take a gulp of coffee before he goes on, “it’s for Cas. He’s—”

“Praying,” Castiel cuts in quickly, “at dawn.”

Sam’s brows shoot up.

“Oh.”

It shouldn’t be so surprising, Sam thinks, that Castiel would pray, but he can’t help but wonder to whom the prayers are sent. Metatron is the only angel left upstairs, after all, and God’s been gone for years.

“I’ll make it quieter,” Castiel adds, “sorry if it woke you.”

“It’s fine.”

Sam doesn’t hear the alarm again. Weeks go by, then a month, then two, and he forgets about it entirely.

As time goes on, the three of them settle into a comfortable rhythm in the bunker. They aren’t always there—mostly, they’re on the road, tracking down fallen angels and helping those they can between hunts—but when they are, it’s nice. It’s not somewhere Sam wants to spend the rest of his life, but for now it’s good. Familiar. Just having someplace to return to, somewhere where he knows how to get the heat in the shower just right, where his sheets are his alone, where he’s got a favorite mug in the kitchen.

Sleep comes more easily, here, than it ever does in a motel. For months, Sam is more rested than he’s been in years.

Between the night in late June when Castiel’s alarm had last woken him, and the beginning of November, Sam’s sleep in the bunker is uninterrupted and peaceful. But on November second, he hears the sound of hushed laughter coming down the hall at four thirty in the morning, and climbs out of bed to see what’s going on. He leans out of his bedroom door just in time to see the door to Dean’s room click shut.

There’s feathers on the floor again, like that first night. He frowns at them, shakes his head, and goes back to bed.

“What were you doing last night?” he asks Dean in the morning, and his brother looks up from his breakfast with wide eyes, the blood draining from his face as his spoon, loaded with lucky charms, hovers in front of his mouth.

“Whatdoyoumean?” he asks, the words jumbling together, and Sam narrows his eyes at him before turning to Castiel, who’s crouching in front of the fridge, trying to decide between orange juice and the chocolate milk he’s become attached to since falling.

“Cas, did you hear him?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replies, shoulders going oddly stiff, but he doesn’t look up from the fridge.

“He was out in the hallway at like—”

Sam’s cell phone rings, cutting him off mid sentence, and Castiel visibly relaxes.

Sam thinks it’s strange, but the conversation is forgotten as soon as he answers the phone to hear Garth practically begging them for help with a vampire nest in Millstone, New Jersey. They pile into the Impala within the hour, and for the next few days they’re too busy trying not to get their throats torn out for Sam to think about mysterious hallway feathers.

Dean gets wind of another hunt two days after they get back—what looks like a simple salt and burn in California—and he tells Sam that he and Castiel will take care of it.

“I mean, you keep saying you want to reorganize the library,” he says with a shrug, biting into a bagel, “and this hunt isn’t exactly a three man job, so…”

Sam doesn’t argue, and he waves them off that afternoon before heading back inside to get started.

The Men of Letters, for some reason he has yet to fathom, had opted to sort their books by publication date rather than subject, and even though it takes him the better part of four days to get it done, the end result is that he can look at the shelves without cringing. And find things. That, too.

It’s quiet in the bunker on his own, and besides the occasional text from Dean letting him know they’re okay, he doesn’t have contact with anyone. It’s more relaxing than he could have hoped for, and he spends the remaining days reading the memoirs of a long-dead scholar of the supernatural.

Though the hunt had seemed like a simple one—just a poltergeist with a habit of moving furniture in a hotel in Santa Monica—it takes almost a week for Dean and Castiel to get back. When he asks them what took them so long, Dean smirks about something before Castiel answers.

“We kept finding more bones.”

Apparently there’s an inside joke there, because Dean starts laughing and doesn’t stop, and after fifteen minutes Sam gives up on trying to find out what the hell is so funny. They order take out that night, and the rest of the month goes by without incident.

The beginning of December finds them in Michigan, tracking down what turns out to be a pair of witches, and after close to two weeks in the freezing cold, Sam catches the flu. The night they get back to the bunker, he wakes himself up with a violent sneeze in the small hours of the morning. He feels like death warmed up, and he’s barely been awake five seconds when another three sneezes come in rapid succession. Reaching out to his bedside table, he finds that he’s already used all the tissues, and with a miserable groan he pushes out of bed. It’s as he’s walking back from the bathroom a few minutes later that he sees it.

Sees Dean.

Dean backing out of Castiel’s open door. Dean backing out of Castiel’s open door in his boxers. Holding his pillow. Smiling.

“What,” Sam says, but he’s got nothing to follow it, and when Dean snaps around to look at him he isn’t smiling any more.

Now, he’s staring, his mouth gold-fishing open and closed as he tries to think of something to say. Behind him, his bare chest covered in what Sam is horrified to realize are hickeys, Castiel’s expression is a perfect match.

Sam points at them.

“You—” he says, and sneezes loudly before he has a chance to finish.

Castiel slams his door shut, and Dean seems to snap out of his stupor.

“It’s not what it looks like?” he offers lamely, and Sam squints at him until Castiel’s door opens again.

He’s dressed now. In Dean’s bathrobe. Holy shit.

“Holy shit,” Sam says.

“Uh… or…” Dean scratches at his neck, avoiding eye contact, “I guess. It kind of is?”

Dean grimaces, clutching his pillow against his chest, and Sam has to shake his head to clear it.

“When did… are you guys…” Sam trails off, not entirely sure how to end the question.

“Intimately involved?” Castiel offers after the silence drags on too long, frowning at Dean when he pulls a face at the words, “yes.”

“Oh.”

“I wanted to tell you,” Castiel goes on, “but Dean seemed to think you’d ‘be weird’ about it.”

“I didn’t—” Dean starts, and Castiel cuts him off.

“Those were your exact words.”

“Yeah, but you’re not supposed to tell him that,” he hisses back, and Castiel sighs, looking back at Sam with an exasperated expression on his face.

Sam just blinks at him, dumbfounded. He’s heard the phrase _thrown for a loop_ before, but now he gets it. This is the loop. Or the throwing. He isn’t sure. It’s just… he frowns.

“There were feathers in the hallway,” he says.

They both stare at him.

“What?” Dean says eventually, and Sam points at the pillow, still clutched to his chest.

“Feathers. In _June_. You were… You… have you seriously been sneaking back and forth for _six months_ because you didn’t want to tell me?”

“Kind of?”

“Jesus, Dean.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t—you don’t have to apologise. Just. Wha—” Sam sneezes again into the crook of his elbow, and shakes his head, “is this a fever dream?”

“Could be,” Dean says, and Castiel elbows him sharply in the ribs, “but, uh, no. It’s not.”

Sam just nods in silence, struggling to figure out how they managed to keep this from him, but his head is aching, and he’s exhausted. There’s an important question swimming to the surface of his mind, and he’s relieved when he finds it.

“You guys are happy?”

“Yeah.”

“Very.”

“Good,” he says, nodding once more before continuing down the hall.

“Where are you going?”

“It’s four in the morning,” Sam says, looking back at the two of them, still standing awkwardly by Castiel’s bedroom door, “I’m going back to bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'll post my piece for each round in the 'Prompt Fic' series--and if you have a one shot prompt you'd like filled, feel free to swing by my Tumblr ask box and let me know! There's a link on my AO3 profile page :)  
> <3


End file.
